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TIJUANACatalyst Manufacturing Services has opened a contract manufacturing operation in Tijuana and will begin shipping production volumes later this month.

The renovated 60,000 sq. ft. facility will operate as a full-service turnkey operation working with market segments including medical, aerospace, and industrial. 

The contract manufacturing company also has locations in Endicott, NY, and Raleigh, NC.

Catalyst offers product design assistance, documentation development, PCB assembly and test, box build, order fulfillment/logistics, and depot repair services.
LYON, FRANCE – 3-D TSV wafers will be shipped in the millions and have the potential to impact as much as 25% of the memory business by 2015, says a new research report.
 
Excluding memory devices, Yole Developpement’s latest market forecast reveals 3-D TSV wafers could account for more than 6% of the total semiconductor industry by 2015.
 
Meanwhile, the equipment market for 3-D TSV manufacturing tools will rapidly expand to above $1 billion by 2013.
 
The research firm says consolidation is taking place in CMOS wafer fabs, with a shift toward a fabless foundry model.
 
A new infrastructure needs to be developed in the middle segment of the semiconductor industry supply chain, Yole says. New technologies, equipment and advanced materials coming from the front- and back-end worlds are being developed and will give rise to a revival of semiconductor packaging and circuit assembly.
 
The impetus for 3-D is clear and has not changed much since the technology was introduced into production for MEMS and CMOS image sensors; it is about achieving smaller form factor with increased package densities to meet bandwidth, RF, power consumption performance improvements and further cost reduction, says the firm. In addition, several players are driven by reliability motivations.
 
WL-CSP CMOS image sensors are poised to leave traditional edge interconnect configurations for “real” 3D-TSV architectures as soon as this year, Yole adds. Vias will be partially or completely filled. Additionally, the number of I/Os will expand to several hundreds of interconnects per chip, with a trend to stack the DSP chips under the image sensor chip itself.
 
MEMS will benefit from 3-D to combine MEMS with ASIC, while wireless SiPs will combine heterogeneous layers together. The market for 3-D stacked memories is imminent and is primarily driven by RAM-based memories; meanwhile, more Flash memory will be combined within MCP, PoP/SiP packages, cellphone card-slots and SSDs, according to the firm.
 
The question now is, Who will develop the lowest cost process and take the risk of the huge initial infrastructure investment required first? Going further, logic-based 3-D SOCs are to set to take off in the next two to three years for different applications. This “true” 3-D/IC integration will be achieved through the progressive segregation of several layers: 3-D partitioning of embedded memories, RF, analog and I/Os layers from the logic base chip will be achieved in the most cost-effective manner by reducing overall chip size areas, says Yole.
 
3-D WLP encapsulation is already in production in CMOS image sensors with via through the backside of the wafer. It will expand to power amplifier modules as well, says the firm.
 
If via-last will account for a large portion of the market, Yole sees a clear trend toward via-first configurations and smaller via sizes approaching 1-5 µm diameters with 500 to 2000 interconnects per chip.
 
3-D interposer module is already in small production for several MEMS applications to combine ASIC and MEMS chips together in a true WLP approach. This technology platform is likely to expand rapidly into many SiP application spaces, says the firm.
 
Several barriers to entry exist for full-scale 3-D IC integration, including test, 3-D EDA design tools, thermal management and 300 mm equipment availability. As contact probe test technologies tend to be more limited with via pad density increasing, they may not scale to future pad dimension pitch shrinks. Moreover, as one portion of the industry is going toward wafer-to-wafer stacking schemes with thin wafers, new requirements are emerging for testing without damage at the wafer level to ensure the electrical functionality of the TSV, RDL and Bump pad structures prior to the stacking of each layer. As a consequence of this, many companies are requesting contact-less testing technologies, says Yole. Technology and equipment are being developed for wafer surface inspection, open/shorts electrical testing and 3-D system level functionality validation.
 
The landscape is different regarding the availability of 3-D EDA design and thermal management software tools. Yole sees effort in this area; however, the company believes it will be a challenge for the industry to get the tools ready by 2011.
 
The availability of 300 mm 3-D TSV equipment is a question of time, the company says. First 300 mm tool clusters have been shipped this year for production pilot lines.  
TAIPEI – The Foxconn rumor mill has kicked into overdrive with reports the world’s largest ODM might buy fellow Taiwanese ODM Inventec Corp.

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VERN SUR SEICHE, FRANCE -- Lacroix Electronique SAS has acquired fellow EMS firm PrehTronics GmbH for an undisclosed amount.

The combined companies will have annual sales over 135 million euros.

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WEST BERLIN, NJ – Dynasil Corp. of America has acquired Radiation Monitoring Devices Inc. and specific assets of RMD Instruments LLC for $20 million in cash and stock.

Under terms of the deal, Dynasil will pay $12.5 million in cash and 4.6 million shares of common stock for RMD.


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OXFORD, CT — Mirtec Co. Ltd. today said North American revenue was up more than 81% year-over-year for the first six months of fiscal 2008. The privately held company did not disclose revenue figures.

In a statement, president Brian D’Amico cited the firm's two new AOI platforms, the MV-7L and MV-3L.

“Mirtec's success is based on a commitment to bring to the market new and innovative products with a special emphasis on quality, accuracy, ease of operation and reliability,” D’Amico said.
ST. PETERSBURG, FL – St. Petersburg officials have approved almost $35 million worth of tax incentives to keep Jabil Circuit headquartered here, a local paper reported today.

Under terms of the deal, the state of Florida would pay $20 million, the city $12.7 million and Pinellas county $1.7 million in a combination of grants, tax refunds and infrastructure upgrades, the St. Petersburg Times reported.

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HUNTINGDON VALLEY, PAAPS Novastar LLC named Tim Kardish chief executive officer. He will oversee all areas of operation for the company, which provides equipment for reflow, curing and through-hole assembly.
 
Kardish has more than 25 years’ experience in sales, marketing, and operations. Most recently he was president of Labsphere Inc., a $13 million photonics industry global manufacturer and distributor of instrumentation, software, services, engineered materials and standards.
 
He previously held the position of VP of sales and marketing for Moore Medical and served as director of sales and marketing for X-Rite.
 

VANCOUVER -- EMS firm Silicon Forest Electronics has added 20,000 sq. ft. of manufacturing space and reconfigured two manufacturing lines to increase speed and flexibility for quickturn, low-volume production.


The company also added high-speed equipment, more than doubling its overall machine capacity to over 7 million placements per month across a total of four lines. Additional capacity improvements are planned for late 2008, which will add another 2 to 4 million placements per month.

The company, which also has capacity in Zhuhai, China, and a partnering arrangement with ACW, provides “one-stop” contract manufacturing.

LOS ALTOS, CA – China’s electronic equipment production market is finally slowing down, and taking the rest of the world with it.

Citing the recent economic environment and spate of earthquakes, research firm Henderson Ventures said China’s short-term equipment production output will drop eight points to 13.5% this year, before rebounding slightly in 2009 and 2010.  Read more ...
COOPERSVILLE, MI – Saturn Electronics & Engineering has been awarded a $500,000 federal grant to help fund new machinery and equipment at its plant here.
 
The company, which makes automotive electronics and components, will use the grant toward planned capital investments of some $11 million. Saturn will hire 26 additional workers as well.
 
The grant is being made available by the Michigan Economic Development Corp.

SINGAPORE – Singapore's electronics industry rose in June, reversing a one-month fall into recession. The sector rose 2.3 points to 51.7, according to purchasing executives in more than 150 industrial companies.
 
May was the first time in nearly two years the electronics sector failed to grow.

The national purchasing managers' index rose 1.6 points sequentially to 50.6 in June, on new orders and higher levels of production output. A reading above 50.0 is a sign of an expanding market.
 
Electronics makes up one-third of Singapore's manufacturing output.

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